


Phantom, Phantasm

by TolkienGirl



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: A study of the best friendship ever that was also doomed to be the most tragic friendship ever, Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Betrayal, Burning of the Ships at Losgar, Coping Mechanisms, Gen, Helcaraxë, Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Not Slash in case you were wondering, Phantom pain, Post-Rescue from Thangorodrim, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, So much angst, Tirion, Torture, basically every painful thing that has happened ever, but some happiness too? that is just made worse by the angst, many of Mythopoeia's best headcanons are incorporated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 18:58:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17903693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: “Patience is neither of our strong suits,” Findekáno parries. “Though wisdom seems to be yours.”“Oh, do not lay such a title on me,” Maitimo laughs, rattling the dice in his long fingers. “I have never claimed to be wise.”





	Phantom, Phantasm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mythopoeia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythopoeia/gifts).



> Fingon is a little older than Celegorm. Huan is a big hound even in Valinor. These are the rules.

As always, Maitimo follows the sound of shouting. This time it brings him to a grove of lindens, where Huan is baying and running circles around a tumble of Noldorin limbs.

Maitimo quickens his pace. He sees Findekáno, and Tyelko, and yes—that is Atarinkë, leaning nonchalantly against one of the smooth grey trees.

Findekáno and Tyelko appear to be fighting.

Maitimo grits his teeth and shouts, “Enough!”

“I’m not—” Tyelko rolls off him. There are leaves in his curling hair. “He hurt his arm, Nelyo.”

“What?”

Findekáno is clutching his right arm to his breast, the fingers of his left hand clenched around his wrist. He looks pale.

Maitimo kneels at his side in an instant. “Káno, how did this happen?”

A little color flushes Findekáno’s cheeks. He struggles to sit up.

“We were climbing trees,” Tyelko mutters. “And Findekáno fell when the branches shook.”

“Were you,” Maitimo demands, in a steely tone, “Responsible for the shaking?”

Atarinkë makes a sound only slightly too dignified to be a snort.

Findekáno pushes himself to his feet, looking very much like his father. Proud, but not in the cold way that _their_ father is proud. “It does not matter,” Findekáno says, as if he is preparing to fall upon a sword. “I shall return home, now.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Maitimo says. “Let me ascertain any breaks, first.”

“Elvish bones can’t break,” Tyelko protests. Huan has huffed over to sit beside him, his massive head level with Tyelko’s shoulder. They are a comical picture of pretended innocence.

“Don’t be a fool,” Maitimo says. He has not Tyelko’s temper—nor Atarinkë’s, nor least of all Moryo’s—but the sight of Findekáno hurt is not one that pleases him. “Findekáno. Your arm.”

Findekáno sets his jaw and lowers the injured limb.

Maitimo runs his hand along the wrist, pressing a little. His cousin gasps. That does it.

“To the healer,” Maitimo says. “At once. I’ll deal with you later,” he adds, sending a flashing glance over his shoulder at Tyelko. Tyelko looks downtrodden. Whatever his tricks, his temper and malice never last long—not even against the cousin closest to his own age, whom he loves to vex and compete with.

Findekáno walks briskly, trying to outpace Maitimo, and Maitimo lets him. It’s likely another point of pride. Atarinkë slinks up alongside.

“At least,” murmurs Atarinkë, smirking, “They did not try to climb Galathilion.”

“Do not even suggest it,” Maitimo warns him, in an undertone—Tyelko can scarcely be trusted, ever since he was gifted Huan by the Vala Oröme himself. Princeling and hound are wreaking havoc all across Tirion.

The healers confirm what Maitimo feared: Findekáno’s arm is broken below the elbow. It will heal quickly, they promise, but Findekáno sits with his eyes cast down.

“Leave us,” Maitimo orders calmly, when the healers have finished, and then he folds his arms over his chest. “What troubles you?”

“You can say it,” Findekáno sighs. “I am too old to be climbing trees.”

Maitimo bites his lip to hide his smile. “I was not going to—”

“You were thinking it.”

“We are never too old for trees,” Maitimo says, since that is the most fundamental truth they know. “Too old, perhaps, for making war with Tyelko in them, but who among us has not warred with Tyelko at one time or another?”

Findekáno does not look up, but his shoulders are a little less slumped.

“Why were you with them, anyway?” Maitimo asks, as they leave the healers’ hall. "The three of you only quarrel."

“Makalaurë is composing music, and wished to be left to himself,” Findekáno answers sourly. “And you have been keeping counsel with our fathers and grandfather all day.”  

 _Your duties as eldest, as my heir_ , his father said, with that thin smile that always seemed to imply that the duties were already left unfulfilled, before Maitimo even knew of their existence. _It is time you learned the business of kingship._

Fëanáro was not, of course, yet king.

“It has been a long day of talking,” he says now, lightly. “Ñolofinwë was eager for it to be over as well, I deem.”

“I am eager for his reproof to be over,” Findekáno observes, glum again. “What shall I tell him?”

“That Tyelko looks much worse than you do.”

“You are laughing at me.”

“Upon my honor, I am not.”

Findekáno smiles.

 

Downstairs, a feast rages on. Rages, because Fëanáro is in a foul mood over some flaw in his work and everyone feels it. Slowly but surely, the grandchildren of Finwë slip away to their quarters. The Ambarussa sprawl beside a hearth. Atarinkë and Findaráto are bent over a book of stars—stars that can scarce be seen beyond the light of the Sacred Trees. Írissë has disappeared with Tyelko and Huan. Makalaurë sings in a low voice to little Artanis, who stares up at him with round eyes.

Findekáno sits across a game-board from Maitimo, his arm still in a sling.

“Damn this,” he says mournfully, plucking at the fine linen. “It was torture at dinner. How long must I do everything with one hand?”

“Not long,” Maitimo assures him. “Did not the healers say it was nearly mended? Have a little patience, cousin.”

“Patience is neither of our strong suits,” Findekáno parries back. “Though wisdom seems to be yours.”

“Oh, do not lay such a title on me,” Maitimo laughs, rattling the dice in his long fingers. “I have never claimed to be wise.”

 

The sun has set. Findekáno wonders how soon Maitimo knew of the sun, or if he only learns of it now. The grey, eternal storm that lay over Thangorodrim kept any true light from leaking in.

He hazards a glance at his cousin now, over the game-board that lies between them. It spawns a host of memories, memories in which Maitimo is hale and whole, but Findekáno dares not speak of them.

For now, the distraction of dice and needless strategy is enough for gratitude.

“How hard it is,” Maitimo says, marveling, “To be of any use like this.” He thumps his maimed wrist lightly on the inlaid wood. “Even rolling dice is a trouble.”

Findekáno wonders if he means it as a jest. If so, he cannot laugh at it. “If there had been another way…”

Maitimo’s eyes flick up at him, endlessly grey. “Not one that would have brought me back again, as you well know.”

They are the only two who will ever truly know.

“Patience is neither of our strong suits,” Maitimo continues mildly, an echo from the past. He drops the dice easily enough. “I shall master the sword again, if not the bow. That, of course, was always yours. And certainly a gnarled stump will do much to quell in horror all but the fiercest enemies.” Again, a knife-edged jest. Findekáno feels it between his ribs.

“I do not care for beauty over life,” he says stubbornly. “Long, now, have I believed that it is better to lose a hand, or a finger, or an ear—” He stops short.

“Since the ice?” Maitimo asks, with a steady gaze.

“You know about the ice?”

“Yes.” And just when his eyes seem, despite his earlier words, to be patient beyond measure, they are shuttered again. He stares at the inlaid table, at the carven game-piece in his left hand. “It was…spoken of, there.”

Findekáno bites the inside of his cheek.

“He knew what we had done to you, to your people,” Maitimo says, deadly quiet. “He could draw out—thoughts—like entrails. It was, sometimes, more painful.”

Findekáno has seen the thick, crooked-stitched scars that carve his cousin from hipbone to rib. They looked—he can scarcely bring himself to think long on it—like they had been opened and resewn many times.

“We survived,” Findekáno says. It is no light thing; he cannot speak of it lightly. But he must chase away the shadows from Maitimo’s too-thin face. He does not add, _not all of us_ , and does not know if the omission is a mercy.

(There was no mercy for Elenwë.)

“Every memory of you delighted him especially.” Maitimo is like one lost in a waking dream. “I was sure, so sure, that you hated me.”

“Never.” Not even when he looked into the darkness and saw the red glow of betrayal lick upwards towards the sky. Not even when his kin groaned their last, frost-splintered breaths. Not even, then, when perhaps he should have. “Makaluarë told me.” He nudges his foot against Maitimo’s. “Russandol. Hear me. Makalaurë told me that you stood aside.”

“Ah yes,” Maitimo says. The bitter smile on his misshapen lips reminds Findekáno too much of Fëanáro. It is a comparison he would never make aloud. “What a savior I must have been, to wait and do nothing.”

 _We deemed it best not to look for him_ , Makalaurë said, with his head bowed. _Understand, Findekáno. The Enemy would have destroyed us all._

 _As Russandol was destroyed?_ Findekáno wanted to cry out, but he held back, held fast. Patience, learned by pain. It took everything he had, too, not to put his hands around his cousin’s throat.

(Once, he loved Makalaurë like a brother.)

 

Time passes, a little. The crown passes too. Maitimo wanders, and Findekáno wonders.

(Maitimo can see it on his cousin’s face.)

He cannot stay in Ñolofinwë’s camp much longer. He knows that. Makalaurë stays by his side, willing to bear the insult of armed guards who are assigned to posts coincidentally aligned with his movements. The rest visit as much as their pride permits.

 _And as much as their love commands_ , Maitimo reminds himself. They love him—and he is Fëanáro’s son, and thus is used to love that does not always feel like love.

Yet ghosts, writ large and small, plague him. It is not enough to dream of the rack, to dream of worse torments than that. All this and his hand plagues him—his missing hand. He can feel the smashed knuckles creak, the torn fingernails sting. He tucks the stump against his breast and mutters a curse over it, the opposite of healing.

“What are you doing?” Findekáno’s gold-ribboned braids glint in the torchlight.

It is night here; not everlasting night, but a cover of darkness lit only by the torches and the stars and the white pearl that Maitimo now knows to call the moon.

“Thinking.”

“That has never done you much good,” Findekáno says, and just as Maitimo hopes that his cousin is teasing him, he adds, “Of late.”

Maitimo swallows his sigh. “I am tortured by a five-fingered demon,” he says, as cheerfully as he can. Findekáno has tried to be so cheerful, since the first moments of his waking.

_Almost as if we could forget that day on the peak._

“A…demon?”

“My hand.” Maitimo runs his left one through his hair, which is long enough to fall across his face in a proper fringe again, but not near long enough yet for his liking. “I can still feel my hand.”

“Oh.” Findekáno seems at a loss for words. He is the one who thinks too much, not Maitimo. “Does it hurt?”

“Like a demon, as I said.” It isn’t a real pain, only an imagined one, which means that he can admit it.

“Come into the tent,” Findekáno suggests, and Maitimo follows. The night has nothing to give him; it never does. In the warmer candlelight, Findekáno asks, tentatively, “Will you—allow me?”

It is not exactly what he said on the cliff, but close enough. Maitimo, if he closes his eyes, will see Findekáno, beautiful and brave beyond all hope, leaning over noble Sorontar’s wild face and golden eyes. If he closes his eyes, he will see his cousin’s lips move, denying him again an arrow to the heart. And then, at last, a question—

_Your hand. Can you bear it if I—_

He had nodded. His voice was spent with singing. It had taken all the strength he had left.

Maitimo does not close his eyes. He stretches out his handless arm to Findekáno, trusting. Again.

Findekáno grasps it, gently, in his right hand.

He flexes his fingers. “Here is a whole hand,” he says, as softly as if he were Makalaurë, or Findaráto in older days. “Imagine it linked with yours. Would that hurt?”

“Likely,” Maitimo whispers.

“Imagine,” Findekáno urges, still with that terrible kindness in his voice, “That it does not hurt. Imagine that the bones are healed. Were the bones broken?”

 _Many times_. It was a favorite pleasure of the _yrch_ , and it hurt more than most things, for the sons of Fëanáro have always prized the skill of their hands as their father did before them.

Little did Maitimo know how that would end for him. “Yes,” he answers.

“The bones have mended,” Findekáno says. “Just as my arm did, long ago, when I raced Tyelko to the treetops and I fell. If you must know,” he adds, with a smile that almost reaches his sad eyes, “Curvo was behind the scheme from the first.”

“He would be.”

“Aye. So, the bones have mended. And the bruises have healed and only callouses remain, not scars. Callouses from your sword, and maybe even your pen—do you remember how much you used to sketch?”

Maitimo has not thought of that in a long time. Such an interest was left behind with Nerdanel, across an aching sea. “I was never very good,” he says. He has never been very good at anything, save slaying—and being nearly slain.

“Speak not ill of them,” Findekáno says. “You drew us all, and we loved those sketches. I’m sure I have mine still.”

Maitimo does not quite believe him, but the dear warmth, long-lost, seems to bloom for a moment in his heart anew.

Gently, Findekáno releases his arm. “Did that help?” he asks. “Did it ease your mind?”

Whether it did or not, Maitimo would give him the same answer. “Yes, Káno,” he says. “You are valiant in healing, as you are in all things.”

 

Maedhros does not see his cousin-king die, but he does see the white light spring forth from afar, and falls to his knees on the field before his lips can even form that precious name.

How cruel are curses and fates, how cruel are the Valar themselves. (Let them strike him down for that blasphemy—how readily he would welcome it.)

How like Fëanáro did Findekáno die—both so opposite in life, united in death.

Both so capable of tearing all that was once Maitimo Nelyafinwë in two.

 

“Maitimo,” Makalaurë calls, and when that goes unanswered, “Russandol.”

Maedhros wheels on him. “Never,” he spits, as hot as the sparks that once rained from their father’s forge, “Call me by that name again.”

Makalaurë leaves, white with grief. Makalaurë lost— _him_ —too.

Maedhros sits in the dark of his captain’s tent, unlit by moon or stars. His left hand spreads on the rough-hewn table before him. He imagines the spread of the right one, too.

 _Imagine_ , says the specter beside him, gold-ribboned braids glinting even in blackness, _that it does not hurt_.

If he does not look down, he can flex fingers that are not there. If he does not turn his head, the specter, too, will remain.

He turns his head. The sad eyes and the quick smile, the gold-trimmed braids—they vanish.

 _Not long, now_ , he whispers into the shadows. _Until I follow._

Surely, even for one so damned as he is, it cannot be long.


End file.
